Elk Miester,
Wow that is some good luck to draw a unit 16a tag. Yes we do hunt unit 16 (we hunt all of the Gila) our other office is in Luna NM. Not to far from reserve. We mainly do private land humts down there as the drawing is a tough one. A land owner bull tag sells for around $5000.00 plus the hunt. So it's pretty much for the well endowed hunters. If you do draw a Tag down in that area your going to see Elk that's a great area. We offer public land hunts down in 15 and 16 for those fortunate enoough to draw.
I personally drew a Valle Vidal tag last year WOW what a great hunt. I only had a cow tag but I saw 2-300+ head of Elk every day and a bull that was in the 400 class and 380 class bulls were like rats in the sewer. But that's a once in a life time draw for bulls and it is a fantastic area. If you ever have the fortune of drawing a Valle tag you've got to have horses to do it right. Many of the guys were just driving up the raod all day and not seeing anything. Well if you get 1 mile off road that's where you start seeing them the sign looks like friggin Elk dozers have been working the area over it was the coolest Elk hunt I've ever been on.

Anyway I degress.

As far as the guy flying over your Elk do you think he saw you guys and was trying to spook the Elk off or was he spotting Elk from the air and just happened to fly over you guys. It's not illegal to fly over game anytime in any state unless your spotting for hunters on the ground or there are some time limits between the time that you fly and the time that you hunt in some states.

In anycase I know how frustrating that scenario can be. It's happened to me several times in AK Caribou hunting. Once after a long crawling stalk I was just getting to position on a huge bull when here comes a plane and buzzes the heard. I wanted to shoot that SOB down,but hey these things happen.